Art

May 31, 2020

A longtime collaborator with Allen Ginsberg,Robert Creeley, and other literary figures, photographer Elsa Dorfman was a true American original. A portrait artist often associated with her main instrument, the large format 20" x 24" inch Polaroid camera, Dorfman, an influence to poets, and, from all reports, a great friend, died this week at 83.

In 2017, I met her when her pal Errol Morris made a film about her, The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, his most intimate documentary. Usually working with out-sized personalities, McNamara to Rumsfeld, the murderous gasman of Zyklon B, to name a few, documentarian Errol Morris has the further distinction with his 1985 TheThin Blue Line, of having changed the course of one man’s destiny with his investigative work, unearthing evidence that showed he was innocent of murder.

Elsa Dorfman, a neighborhood friend seems a smaller portrait indeed, but the filmmaker caught up with this mild-mannered photographer just as the Gentle Giant movers were removing some large-scale Polaroids for storage, so his picture of her surprises as it covers the technical aspect of Polaroid photography, and perhaps, the end of an era. This conversation from that time, as the film was about to open after a distinguished festival run including the New York Film Festival, reveals something of Dorfman’s charm. Errol and Elsa complete one another’s sentences.

May 28, 2020

Superstars Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey may be grabbing headlines offering online encouragement to college graduates this season, but John Waters did the job this week, dispensing discordant wisdom to designers and other artists graduating from The School of Visual Arts. The ceremony, usually held at Radio City Music Hall, featured far flung speakers, Waters himself at a podium with curtain backdrop from his home in Baltimore, setting of his most famous satiric films including his underground homage to filth, Pink Flamingos, and his breakout commercial hit, Hairspray. A dapper dresser in brocade jackets, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.”

May 07, 2020

A West Coast beat, Michael McClure was less of a presence in New York than the seminal figures: Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, but he was no less of a master poet, combining his love of nature with traditional forms such as villanelles, sonnets and sestinas. One of the last beat poets, Michael McClure (87) died this week.

Back in 1956, at the pivotal Six Gallery reading, where Ginsberg read Howl for an audience for the first time, and a shy Kerouac passed around a jug of red wine, as legend has it, McClure performed his 1954 poem, “For the Death of a Hundred Whales,” breaking down its ballad meter to A-B-C-B rhymes, to form a “cubist poem,” as he explained in his “The Beat Journey: An Interview.” He combined a love of theater, poetry, and art with his ecological concerns, and, among his credits, performed with Ray Manzarek of The Doors.

April 20, 2020

The story of Peter Beard has a grim end: some 19 days after he disappeared, after search parties including helicopters had given up their trawling the rocky coast, the erstwhile adventurer has just turned up. Some thought he went into the sea, lunch meat for sharks, if there are such fish at these shores, but no: maybe he’d gone into some secret corner of the woods, and like beat poetry catalyst Neal Cassady, another legend, died of exposure. No body, no news. But now all that may change.

The Times retold an anecdote about Beard, that while working in the city, when he was told his house had gone up in flames, he just continued his work. What the Times failed to say, and what might merely be Montauk rumor, was that the house had been burnt down by workers, locals disgruntled that they had not been paid. Legends abound about such adventurers: some saw the house lifted off the nearest cliff by Sikorsky helicopter, moved to the most remote point, a piece of property jutting farther into the sea than the lighthouse. Montauk residents gathered outside the church in the early ‘80’s, when Beard married Cheryl Tiegs.

February 18, 2020

At the Greenwich House Theater for a memorial for Rip Torn, awesome clips revealed the evolution of this legendary actor’s astonishing film career from Baby Doll (1956) to Bible epics through roles as a good guy and then menacing bad ass, onto his Emmy winning television work on “The Larry Shandling Show” and “30 Rock” with a hilarious scene with Alec Baldwin. A bit from his 1969 The Bearding of the President showed him with his “Nixon” nose, his own invention, and at least one friend opined that he would have been an even bigger presence in film and stage but for his politics.

But among the ample work that was not screened, was a bit of voice over in the Oscar winning documentary Harlan County USA. Filmmaker Barbara Kopple needed someone to say, “We’ve got our guns now,” and asked him to say the line so it could be heard. “I’ve never told anyone, but now I am telling you,” Kopple confessed to a crowd of New York friends and family, among them David Amram who led the speakers off and concluded with a special song for Rip, and accompanied Rip’s twin sons with Geraldine Page, Jon and Tony Torn, in a reading of Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

December 03, 2019

Traditionally, the IFP Gotham Awards kicks off the film awards season. As celebrations go, this decidedly downtown dinner, sponsored by Robert Hall Winery, brings together New York’s movie making elite while honoring lower budget fare in Oscar-like categories. This year, I wanted to coin a category of my own, Best Speech, to be given to Olivia Wilde for her encomium to her "Richard Jewell" co-star Sam Rockwell, awarded one of Gotham’s four Lifetime Tributes. Wilde referred to the Academy Award winner for last year’s “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” as “Sammy.” Yes, he’s definitely a Sammy she said later, lifting the train of her flowing white gown to prevent tripping as guests exited Cipriani Wall Street for the night.

August 10, 2019

Come out of the dark: Ugo Rondinone’s work at Guild Hall lifts us in radiant shots of sunlight. In the two large gallery spaces the walls are bare, lit by fluorescen fixtures. You might be mistaken to think you are in Walmart under this austere light, but the effect on the art is, well, looking in full sun, stunning. In one gallery, a series of graphic yet shimmering circles in gold and yellow are juxtaposed with Guild Hall’s regal space. In another gallery, large hoops made of twigs work as frames, and the few hung on the wall with nails suggest Christ’s crown of thorns, a beatific sight. In a third gallery, hung shingle style, are hundreds of children’s drawings of the sun, some in blazing color. Everywhere at Guild Hall, the suggestion of hope offers a glimpse of a better future.